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Friday, November 27, 2015

A Most Violent Year

Anna Morales (Jessica Chastain) and her husband Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac)
Abel is successful heating oil dealer in New York City back in 1981. He is feeling his oats and wants to expand, but naturally events conspire against him and so we get a movie.

The thing that got me about this is that he has all the trappings of success, the fancy car, the beautiful wife, the big house, the nice clothes, all things that I was jealous of when I was a kid (a kid being anyone younger than I am). But all he is is a business man. He sells heating oil. I would be bored to tears. Most of American business is like this, simply providing commodities to people who want them. If there is something I am grateful for, it's that so many people are willing to do this ordinary work, the same job every day, day after day. The most interesting part of the job is probably talking to the people you run into. It's a little sad that it has taken me this long to figure that out.

1 comment:

James Rivington said...

Hi Chuck. You are so right. Without people doing mundane jobs (like IT support), we would be doomed.

This guy is a buddy of mine; he is a typical "overnight success". After only 37 years in the business, including some really scary down years, he is "suddenly" making really good money. Talk about mundane; this guy sells air filter and humidifier parts online. He's the amazon.com of air filters and humidifier parts. He works like a slave (I guess that's why his Twitter account is so out of date).
https://twitter.com/JayGuliano1

Reminds me of a young entrepreneur I met in Austin who had just opened a small hardware store. He said it was his calling to save the world. His attitude was that, without easy access to hardware, people would be unable to repair their stuff, and all their stuff would start falling apart, eventually ending civilization as we know it. He was so dedicated to that calling that he gave me, a recent immigrant, a credit account when none of the local banks would give me a credit card. And he was open on Sunday, in Texas! I made a point of shopping there on Sunday. That was 35 years ago. I hope he is flourishing, for the sake of the world.

Regards.